Monday, February 13, 2012

The Lady in the Lake

The Lady in the Lake,
Raymond Chandler’s fourth Philip Marlowe novel, was written just a few months
after Pearl Harbor (published in 1943) but there are surprisingly few
references to the war in it. Perhaps
this reflects Chandler’s take on how the war affected Americans of the day –
that, unless a son or husband was in the military, everyday life went on pretty much as
normal. Or maybe he simply did not want
to clutter up his murder mystery with too many references to such a
catastrophic world event. Whatever his
reasoning may have been, The Lady in the
Lake still holds up well when compared to most of the crime fiction being
produced today.

Philip Marlowe has been hired by Derace Kingsley, a perfume
company tycoon, to find his missing wife, a woman Kingsley believes has run off
to Mexico with her lover. As a place to
begin his search, Kingsley points Marlowe in the direction of the couple’s
remote getaway cabin located in the California hills on Little Fawn Lake. While being shown around the site, Chandler
and the property’s caretaker, Bill Chess, spot a woman’s body in the shallow
waters of the lake. That is when
Chandler realizes that he is dealing with something much more complicated than the
search for a man’s runaway wife.

Raymond Chandler is deservedly well known for his noir
fiction and The Lady in the Lake is
representative of that style. The novel
is filled with strong characters bordering on what have become almost
stereotypical types in noir fiction, all of whom play their parts well but
offer little in the way of surprises. Derace
Kingsley is the hard headed businessman who has little time or respect for
those who do not play in his league. Al
Degarmo is a brutal cop so confident and high on himself because of his
unchallenged power on the streets that he has no fear of ever being exposed. On
the other hand, two of Chandler’s characters do have a nice feel of
authenticity about them: Bill Chess, the cantankerous caretaker at Little Fawn
Lake, and Sheriff Jim Patton whose jurisdiction includes the lake area. Patton, in particular, is one of those memorable
characters with whom most readers will easily identify.

The flaw in The Lady
in the Lake appears late. As the
book nears its finish, Chandler’s hardcore style morphs into what more resembles
the Agatha Christie school of cozy detective fiction endings. Trapped in a small cabin with the person he
believes is a coldblooded killer and the lawman that can make the arrest,
Marlowe begins a monologue during which he notes and eliminates, one-by-one,
the possible suspects. Marlowe does
manage to spook his suspect into a fatal mistake, but it is always a letdown to
the reader to have so much action take place “offstage.”

The Lady in the Lake
may not be considered classic Chandler in the way that The Big Sleep, The Long
Goodbye, and Farewell, My Lovely
are, but Chandler fans will not want to miss it.

2 comments:

I'm sort of pacing out Chandler books, so I'll have 'new' ones to read in my old age. I think this one may have to wait another decade before I read it.

You raise an interesting point about not mentioning the war. I wonder when it becomes the trend for mystery/detective novels to include current events. Seems to me neither Dashell Hammet or Raymond Chandler ever did that much. And I wonder how much the war had really affected the lives of most Americans four months after Pearl Harbor. Had there been large scale depoyments yet?

Well, I'm already in my old age, James, so I'm not holding any back. :-)

You're right. It was probably still a little early in this country;s war efforts for its real impact to be felt on the homefront. I know that my father was drafted off the farm in the middle of 1943 along with two of his brothers. The pace quickened about then, I suspect.

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